Fore Street, Beer, Devon - Part Two

 

This is the second part of Fore Street in the village of Beer. It's a village with the most amazing variety of architectural styles, many of which are late 19th and early 20th century Arts & Crafts buildings, along with the much older vernacular cottages and 19th century parish church.

Following from Part One - which can be seen here - the next one along on the west side is the Dolphin Hotel. 

The white building, seen below, is a wing of the Dolphin. What's interesting is the red telephone box bottom centre against the adjoining wall of the two buildings. Unfortunately I didn't get a clear photo of it, but it's a King George IV designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935, and is listed as Grade I.

The Dolphin itself is also a Listed Building, at Grade II, and is built in the same style as several other buildings, including Manor Cottages and the Town Hall, both in Seaton. I suspect that some or all of these may have been designed by David Carr, or at least influenced by his work. Many Beer buildings belonged to the Clinton Devon Estates that David worked for.

 

Flint rubble walls with painted quoins and window surrounds, the main part was built mid 19th century. The white wing was much earlier in the 17th century, later remodelled during the early 19th.

The next one along is a tiny cottage, called Haslemere, sandwiched between The Dolphin and the following adjoining building, below.

It's in a similar style with the alternate limestone brickwork around the door and windows, echoing the quoins of the buildings each side, along with the quirkiness of windows at different heights. As they are all of similar design I suspect they were built at the same time, either building on existing cottages or from scratch on an empty or demolished site.

I love this attractive wrought iron fence with its floral finials painted white, and which looks especially attractive with a background of bright tulips and other plants.

This one to the left is Jimmy Greens Clothing Store, an accessory outlet of the Chandlery business which supplies ropes and other accroutements for boats and yachts.

This has got to be one of the loveliest buildings I've ever seen, with its quirky, higgledy piggledy levels of roofs and windows and with such fabulous features as the ground floor shop windows. The window and door shapes within the pointed frontage gives it a somewhat organic feel, as if about to enter a limestone cave. 

That limestone frontage runs across the whole front, uniting the split roofs and ups and downs of the various door and window heights.

I wish now that I'd taken more photos of this, but I was so determined to get as many buildings as possible before the next bus home that I was a bit slap dash. If I take more on a future visit I'll add them to its own article.

And here are some details of the windows, below, with their fabulous leaded panels at the sides and headers.

After this there's a little lane between the buildings, followed by a pub called The Barrel of Beer. I don't have any photos of that one but the next one after it is the lovely little Old Lace Shop cottage.

A charming 17th century cottage, The Old Lace Shop isn't a listed building but it does have historical interest as well as this lovely frontage. Beer was one of the East Devon towns where the main occupation for women was lacemaking. It was in Beer that the lace for Queen Victoria's wedding dress was made and this shop may have been the outlet for their wares. The lace was sent to Honiton for dispatching due to the town being on the turnpike road to London, which is why it's sometimes referred to as Honiton Lace, even though it also came from Beer and Seaton plus other towns and villages along the coast.

It's so lovely and simple and the black and white decor makes it striking, with its plain plank door, attractive windows and sign above the door, which I think is probably a modern addition.

And below, a close up photo of the pretty stained glass pane above the front door.

Next along are a pair of cottages between the Old lace Shop and Beach Cottage.

I don't have a name for these and, like many of the others, it isn't on the Listed Buildings register. Again, there is the distinctive style that's common throughout many of these adjoined buildings.

Varied windows also adorn these two cottages, with Tudor style mullioned windows on each ground floor (seen above) and pointed and rectangular shaped gables above windows, seen below. There are also hanging tiles above the right one, which was quite popular with this style at the beginning of the 2oth century and which is lovely to see.

The adjoining building is Beach Cottage, which is part of the same elevation as Beach Court and continues the same style of flint rubble with limestone quoins and surrounds, along with the fabulous gables.

The same details of pointed and rectangular gables are also on this and Beach Court, but the door is within a recessed porch with glazed tiles partway up the walls.

And finally we come to Beach Court. I have an extended article with many more photos of it, which can also be seen here.

Built in 1903, it was originally called the Beach House Hotel. Now residential, it was split into separate flats and renamed Beach Court. Some of the ground floor flats can be seen at the side, below.

And finally, looking along to the opposite side of Fore Street, which we'll be starting in Part Three.

The very last one at the end, and partially around the corner, is another pub called The Anchor, which I don't have any photos for yet. As the rest are on the opposite side I'm going to leave it here. A little shorter than Part One, but I'll add more to it as and when I can take photos of the Anchor and the Barrel of Beer.

Next up is another article in the Odds & Ends series that I've been working on - if I can find another one or two items to go with those I already have, which I might have in my stack of older photos. Then there are several others that I've made a start on, so the jury's out which one of those gets finished first!

Meanwhile, the weather has been getting somewhat better with more sun and less rain, although it's still very cold. I'm leaving it for a while yet, but will hopefully start getting out a bit farther afield soon. 

Cheers everyone! :)  

 

Range of Thatched Cottages, Seaton, Devon

 

 

I took a few photos of these cottages when thatchers were working on the roof, then included them in an article about traditional thatching in Devon, which I'll link here. As promised, I finally took more photos recently and can now write a separate post with all the photos and more information about these lovely cottages.

A range of three attached cottages, the building is a Grade II Listed building circa 18th century, consisting of two private residences and a Victorian shop front. They are listed as 'Premises of Neils and Nos 27 and 31'. However, I'm not sure that's right as the shop is No 27, therefore the other two should be 29 and 31. 

I've been meaning to go and check that out but I haven't been able to due to storms and flooding, including a small lake across the path and lawns in front of my block of flats! We just need a few ducks and we'll have a traditional village green with pond. ;)

It's a two-storey range - some of which was altered in the 19th century - with thatching along the whole roof. The central dwelling, seen above, has a splayed bay with ground and first floor windows and a gable, also thatched. The green moss makes it look like a velvet throw over the roof; just the thing to keep warm in winter. ;)

Neils was a greengrocers, which had a great selection of fruit and vegetables, plus jars of jams & preserves and several varieties of bagged nuts and dried fruits. That was when the town was heaving with independent shops and there were four greengrocers, one of which also sold fresh fish. This one's now a hairdressers, appropriately called Salon 27.

 

The photos above were taken when Neils had the shop and the name was on the canopy. Interestingly, the building to the right of it - a ladies & children's clothing and haberdashery called Canns - later on became the library, which itself has recently been moved to another building.

The far left dwelling can be seen across the road above, also a black & white photo, this one taken from Beer Road opposite. And again below, taken from the side.

The terrace is partially attached to the next building along. This creates a small courtyard in front of the shop on the left. And below, some close-ups of the side, where the thatch looks just like a fur collar!

 

Thatch lasts for some considerable time before needing to be replaced, from 30 to 60 years, with regular patching and replacing of the ridge sometime between three and six years. It's the ridge on top of the roof that the thatchers are working on in the photos below.

Traditionally a plain thatch is used in Devon, which fits in well with the style of buildings. The local tradition of Combed Straw thatching (also known as Wheat Reed and Devon Reed) is thought to be unique to the South West, going back at least 600 years and using straw from local wheat. Most thatched buildings are Listed Buildings due to their historical and architectural importance.

Devon is well known for its thatched roofs and, although there are thatched roofs in other parts of England and other countries, Devon has retained the most historic thatch worldwide consisting of around 4,000 examples.

The oldest preserved thatch in Devon is pre-1550 and still has blackened thatch from a time before chimneys were in use. At least 180 examples of these are still in existance and are specifically interesting for studying historical thatching techniques.

This is just one particular style of building with its retained thatched roof, with many others as well as the more traditional, iconic Devon cottages. A large selection can be seen in the Traditional Roof Thatching in Devon article which can be accessed via the link in the first paragraph. 

And one final, slightly different angle of the end buildings to finish off with.

It was so nice to get out and take these photos. There'll be more coming up from this area later on in a couple of posts, plus a few more photos I need to take. However, I'm going to make Part Two of Fore Street in Beer my next priority before adding more from Seaton. 

I've also got a stack of street and building photos taken in Exeter some 35 years ago to sort through. I'm hoping to add some of those in a few articles, which I'm looking forward to doing. I really wish I could get back there as there's still so much of interest to take photos of. 

Meanwhile, it actually stopped raining for a couple of days and there are lovely tiny tete-a-tete daffodils and grape hyacinths flowering in my balcony planters, which feels like Spring is actually on its way.

Cheers everyone! :)

 

Weather Lore: Part Three

 

Part Three brings us up to June and almost midway through the year. June, from the Latin word Iuniores, was the month dedicated to youth by the Ancient Romans.

 

Often called 'Flaming June', it is a time of fresh and bright colours, the hedgerows filled with new growth and the delights of honeysuckle, wild roses, foxgloves, pink campion and also verges full of the white umbellical flowers (wild parsley, hogweed, etc), wild garlic, the pretty lady's smock and the lovely starry greater stitchwort, along with butterflies and birdsong.

This is the time of long, light evenings in Britain, culminating in the shortest night of the year - the Summer Solstice on the 21st - after a long gradual dusk. It doesn't get completely dark until around 10-45pm here in the South-West, provided the sky is clear of clouds, and is a fair bit later the more north you go up to the Hebrides.

These two photos above and below were taken sometime between 9 and 9-30 on the evening of the Summer Solstice in 2009.

In Britain we often regard the solstice as being the beginning of summer rather than midsummer. We do get hot summers but they don't always last beyond two or three weeks at best!

It is often celebrated with bonfires, festivals and special events in some parts of Britain, particularly in Scotland. Here in England, a well known gathering place is at Stonehenge and other places of prehistorical significance.

In Anglo-Saxon, the terms for July were Heg-monath, meaning Hay Month, or Maed-monath, which means Mead Month. Up until recent decades hay fields were cut to produce lovely sweet smelling hay full of nutritious flowers and grass to make winter feed for livestock. This was usually done in June or July.

Plenty of honey was also produced, not only for sweetness but also for making mead, an alcoholic beverage containg honey fermented with water and yeast, sometimes served as a mulled mead heated with added spices for festival occasions.

St Swithun's Day falls on the 15th of July and is another rhyme that was used to fortell the coming weather.

"St Swithun's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain,
St Swithun's day if thou be fair
For forty days 'twill rain no more." 

Having seen some Cumulonimbus clouds in Part Two, some more cloud formations include the Mackerel sky, seen below...

 

 A mackerel sky saying is as follows:

"Mackerel sky and mare's tails make tall ships carry low sails."

"Mackerel sky is associated with altocumulus clouds while 'mare's tails' refer to cirrus clouds. Both could develop before the instance of a storm, which would lead to the lowering of the ship's sails." The Met Office.

...plus this amazing billow cloud seen in the next photo.

One of the rarest cloud formations is called the Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud. Named after two meteorologists, Hermann von Helmholtz and William Thomson Kelvin who studied turbulent airflow, it's a billowing wave pattern caught between two air streams.

I was extremely fortunate to be walking along the sea front when I saw this phenomenon. Looking like a pie crust, I called my photo 'Pie in the Sky'. The photo above was the edge of it on the right and the fuller cloud can be seen below.

A few more rain prophecies that I remember being said when I was a girl are as follows:

"When cows lie down in the field it's a sign of coming rain." 

Apparently there's no scientific reason for it. It was a fairly unusual occurrance to see all the cows lie down however, and often facing the same direction so that it did seem significant.

"Rain before seven, fine by eleven." 

Which can be true, as rain systems coming across Britain rarely last more than four hours. Mind, I've known it to rain all day sometimes, but perhaps there are slight breaks between them which sometimes go unnoticed.

Right, I'm going to leave it there for now as there's still a fair amount to get through so I'm going to do another part. I didn't intend to do four parts but that's how it's working out...so far! Hopefully I can manage without having to do five or more. :)

I don't know what's coming up next. I'm still working on Fore Street in Beer but I've also received my latest photos back from the printers and scanned them. I'm still post editing but I might write up one of those before I finish another long one.

Cheers for now! :)